Love and Loss
by Saturdaychick
Summary: Erik and Lisette enjoy a morning in the park while Madame Giry and Meg pay a visit on Christine.


**Love and Loss**

After breakfast, Erik asked Lisette to walk with him in the Tuileries Garden in celebration of his success in keeping her safe the night before . They strolled down to the Garden arm in arm and once there, Lisette spun around, laughing, her arms wide, her white blonde hair streaming behind her. Erik watched her with delight. "Come, Erik," she cried, "dance with me!" she implored.

Erik, ever watchful, his cloak collar up, and his hat pulled low to shade his mask, declined her invitation. "Not today, my dear." He did not want to tempt fate, and he wanted to enjoy this morning with the beautiful Lisette. She seemed to light up any place she inhabited. Her black coat was unbuttoned, her pink silk dress setting off her peaches and cream complexion. The roses and flowers now emerging in the early spring complimented the rare flower that was now his.

As they walked, she continued to skip and dance around him, spinning ahead and then coming back to walk at his side. "I am so happy, now, Erik! You have made me happier than at any time in my life. I was so lucky you found me!"

As they walked now side by side, his heart warm inside him, happier, than he, too had ever been. "Perhaps it was I who was the lucky one," he replied. Loving Lisette was much less complicated than loving Christine, as complicated and troubling as Lisette's life had been. His love for Christine had grown from a fondness for the orphaned child he reached out to as her Angel of Music to the grand, mad passion he felt for the young woman she had become. The woman who inspired his greatest, maddest, most passionate work, "Don Juan Triumphant". He didn't think he could live without her. His Angel. He had to look down at Lisette to shake himself from these darker thoughts.

Back at the Opera House, Antoinette Giry and Meg stood outside Christine's dressing room door. When she returned she requested her old room, and had redecorated it a bit. She sat at her desk, a little diary open in front of her. But nothing new had been entered. She simply sat and stared at the huge, gold framed mirror that took up a whole wall of this bedroom dressing room. The knock woke her from her reverie and she stood and unlocked the door.

"Madame? Meg?" she said, dreamily. "Is there another rehearsal I've missed? I know "Faust" by heart. I don't think I'll mess it up too much by missing a rehearsal."

Antoinette and Meg glanced at one another. The ultra professional Christine they knew would never, ever miss a rehearsal unless she was on her deathbed. "May we come in, Christine?"

"Oh! Yes, of course. I'm not quite myself, yet. Forgive me for being so impolite. You are my family. You never need an invitation."

She gestured and the two women entered. Antoinette, stately and beautiful as always, dressed in the signature black dress which she wore as ballet mistress, her dark hair in a braided bun atop her head. Meg, dressed in her rehearsal leotard and skirts with her blonde hair braided and tied back in a pink ribbon, looked at her with big brown worried eyes. She flung her arms about her friend. "Christine! Mama and I have been so worried about you. We want you to come stay with us."

"Yes, my dear girl, "Antoinette looked at her with concern, "Let us look after you. Since you left Raoul and returned to us two weeks ago, you have not seemed yourself. Is something troubling you? Raoul sent several messages which we delivered to your door. Have you read them?"

Christine moved to sit on her bed, Meg sat beside her. Antoinette took the desk chair and turned it to face the young women.

"I read them. He still loves me. He says he is worried sick and still wants to marry me. When I didn't reply, he became more insistent and more demanding that I reply and that he be allowed to come see me. He doesn't understand."

"What doesn't he understand, Christine?" Antoinette asked.

"That I love Erik. I love him. I didn't think I could live without him, without his love and guidance as my Angel. As the man I turned my back on. How could I have done that, Madame? How could I have let his face, something he was born with, that he had no control over, define my feelings for him?" here she broke into sobs burying her face in her hands.

Antoinette and Meg exchanged meaningful looks over the weeping form of their beloved friend and ward.

"You are still young, Christine. Erik is a complex man. I've known him for many years. He is a true genius in every sense of the word except one…"

"And what is that, Madame?" Christine lifted her face to look up at Antoinette.

"The heart. His love for you was an obsession that took hold of him unlike anything I've ever seen before. He almost destroyed the Opera House and himself, with it. He tried to force you to love him and when you denied him that… well. It almost killed him. He's recovered enough, though it hurts him when you are back here singing the lead." Antoinette sighed. "You know his story? He didn't have a happy past, he's done things, well, some very dark things that I thought he had put behind him. I hope he has. He's been quiet since you left. Truthfully, I haven't seen him lately. I've been worried about him."

Christine began to weep again. Meg put her arm around her friend. "He's found someone else. He loves her. I've seen her, Madame, and she loves him, too. I could see it in her eyes. I went to him. I went to his Lair. She arrived a few moments later. She knew about me." Here she paused, then continued, "it is odd, her eyes are the same color as Erik's. A golden, amber color. She looked at me with a kind of challenge in them. A challenge to me, I think, that Erik was hers now. That I not make him forget that. "

Once again, Antoinette and Meg looked to one another, then back at Christine. "How did he meet her?" Anoinette queried, "He rarely goes out. Not often. But, then, I don't exactly have the time to keep tabs on him. What is she like? She must be extraordinary to have accepted our Opera Ghost's heart, broken as it must have been." Antoinette spoke of Erik with such kindness and respect that Christine burst into tears again.

Finally pulling herself together, she replied, "She IS extraordinary. I have to admit it. She is young. Younger than I am now. She has an ethereal presence. She is dainty, maybe a bit over 5 feet. Small, petite. Her hair is

white blonde and her complexion is lovely. She is so unusual looking that I almost couldn't take my eyes off her. I could see that Erik was enchanted by her. I don't know how they met. I only know it is too late for me. I have lost him."

"Come, Christine. Let Erik have his happiness. The happiness you denied him. Whoever this young woman is, she must know who he is. What lies beneath the mask. Now, get up, pack a few things while we wait and come home with us. We will help you recover from this blow. It can't have been easy to come back and try to make things right between you, two. But we will help you, we love you, my dear girl, you know that. We will feed you and pamper you and help you rehearse. You are a professional . You know Erik would not be pleased to hear you missed a rehearsal. I am sure he still cares for you. "

"Not the way he did," Christine murmured as she gathered her costume and a few dresses and other articles of clothing. She stood, lifted her carpet bag and followed the two women out the door and across the hall, glancing back at the mirror as she locked the door, leaving her room dark and empty. As dark and empty as her heart felt now.


End file.
